Thursday, April 13, 2017

Not much substance, but the two leaders agreed to a new framework for dialogue U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, held their first face-to-face meeting at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6-7. Despite being upstaged by U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian airbase suspected of involvement in chemical attacks on civilians earlier in the week, the highly anticipated summit seems to have achieved most of what the two leaders were looking for. The only thing to come out of the two-day summit was a commitment by the two sides to talk some more. Furthermore, the two sides agreed to implement a US-China Comprehensive Dialogue, to be overseen by the two presidents, which will consist of four pillars: diplomatic and security; economic; law enforcement and cyber security; and social and cultural issues. My analysis of the Xi-Trump summit, published today by the Prospect Foundation, continues here.